From Sophie's front desk — Tuesday, August 25
Al Jazeera — read the full story
The servers in São Paulo are scrubbing child profiles tonight. Brazil's $30 million fine against ByteDance means deleted datasets, illegally harvested behavioral records of minors wiped from the company's systems. Al Jazeera reports the enforcement: TikTok collected data from children in violation of local privacy law, and now the state is forcing deletion. Franklin had a word for this kind of reckoning — the invisible hand meeting the visible one. Seneca after him.
I was twenty-two when I first kept a ledger of my own faults , thirteen virtues, one page per week, a black mark for each lapse. You know the feeling: the quill hesitates over Temperance after the second tankard, over Frugality when the new coat catches your eye. The ledger does not lie. Neither does the market. Now Brazil tells us a company called ByteDance has been harvesting the private doings of children — their likings, their whereabouts, the very shape of their days — and selling the knowledge to advertisers. Thirty million dollars the fine. The company must purge the stolen records. A fair penalty, if the ledger balances.
But who audits the ledger? The same merchants who profit from the entries. I recall the coffee-house orators of '67, crying that one colony's refusal to quarter soldiers justified punishing five-and-twenty. The logic was merchant's logic: seize the cargo, burn the ship, call it justice. Here the cargo is a child's attention. The ship is a screen that never sleeps. The merchants call it engagement. We called it corruption of youth when the Crown sent pamphlets instead of primers.
My sister Jane wrote from Philadelphia in '77 that she had buried children who seemed to thrive until fever took them. Data does not fever. It accumulates. It waits. It becomes a mortgage on a mind not... yet formed. The law may delete the files. The habit remains.
not willing to think it is all oing to misconduct. I have had some children that seemed to be doing well till they were taken off by Death. That the Blesing of God may atend you in Boath your Publick and private Affairs is the Prayer of your Affectionat Sister Jane Mecom Addresse…
and search’d by an English Frigate of 22 Guns, 50 Leagues from Nantuckett Shoals. He threw over his Mail and all his Letters except one for Mr. Williams which he has sent. He further adds there was no Account of How’s Fleet and Army, and that Burgoyne had lost 2,500 Men in differ…
navigation-act? Allowing that the assembly of one colony, New York, has refus’d to comply with that act, and that some merchants of that one colony have dared to petition, and that refusing and petitioning are high treason; are five and twenty colonies to be punished for the crim…
Sir Paris Decr. 9th. 79 Mr. Moses Grimmel who called on me this day for the Money of 2 acceptances of yours to two Loan office Bills informed me of his misfortunes. The seizure of the £15000 in Bills he had about him endorsed in blanc is an Irregularity to be sure, but not deserv…
The New British Congress. &ca. &ca. We greet you well. Signed by order of the Society Daniel ThomsonSecretary P.S. We have Sir resolved that a copy of this epistle be published in the news papers. This resolution was taken from a belief, that our new name cannot be disliked by th…
Lucilius, you ask what I make of this Brazilian magistrate who has laid a thirty-million penalty on the house that owns the spectacle-machine. I think of Nero at eleven, already performing for the court, already being measured for the purple , and I think of the gladiators at midday, how the crowd fed on their deaths and called it sport. The machine does not merely show children dancing. It watches them watching. It maps the pause before a swipe, the linger on a face, the hour the bedroom goes dark. It builds a ledger of the developing soul and sells the ledger to merchants.
The fine is large. The deletion order is proper. But the ledger has already been read, the patterns already taught to the next version of the machine. You cannot un-know a child's rhythm once you have timed it. We have seen this before. The familia that owns the grain supply knows...
which households run short before the families themselves do. The tax-farmer knows the harvest before the farmer cuts it. Power always seeks the ledger. The only question is whether the law arrives before the ledger is closed , or after. The magistrate has spoken. The machine will pay.
The children are still inside it. Write me from Sicily , have you taught your nephew to close his eyes when the screen demands them?
The Internet Classics Archive | The Enchiridion by Epictetus Home Browse andComment Search Buy Books andCD-ROMs Help The Enchiridion By Epictetus Commentary: A few comments have been posted about The Enchiridion. Download: A 40k text-only version is available for download. The En…
The Internet Classics Archive | The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius Home Browse andComment Search Buy Books andCD-ROMs Help The Meditations By Marcus Aurelius Written 167 A.C.E. Translated by George Long The Meditations has been divided into the following sections: Book One [28k] …
as to children masks appear terrible and fearful from inexperience, we also are affected in like manner by events (the things which happen in life) for no other reason than children are by masks. For what is a child? Ignorance. What is a child? Want of knowledge. For when a child…
as to children masks appear terrible and fearful from inexperience, we also are affected in like manner by events (the things which happen in life) for no other reason than children are by masks. For what is a child? Ignorance. What is a child? Want of knowledge. For when a child…
in the Comedy, the old man begs to have his fosterchild's top for a keepsake, though he knows well that it is a top and nothing more, so should you act also in the affairs of life. You mount the rostra and cry aloud, "O man, have you forgotten what is the real value of what you s…
The story ran in Al Jazeera. Brazil's $30 million fine on ByteDance for harvesting child data is enforcement that actually moves — it forces deletion, not just payment. That's all for Old News today.